


Sweeter Like This

by romantisch



Series: Blood and Sun [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Forests, Gift Giving, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23868616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romantisch/pseuds/romantisch
Summary: Elion runs a finger through the chipped corners, and rough-hewn surface. He would guess that Thorin’d procured the figure from the toy market in Dale, but the whittling is… humbling, almost. It is pleasant, personable. Personal. A thought springs to mind.“Did you make this?”
Relationships: Thorin Oakenshield/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Blood and Sun [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714840
Kudos: 48





	Sweeter Like This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spidertams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidertams/gifts).



> congratulations for hitting 100k!! <33

ii.

There is a quiet buzz in the air, a pleasant hum in his ears. Grass under his weight, breeze in his hair, tossing gently. This is his favourite part.

Lembas tastes sweeter like this, fresh and a little warm on his tongue, eaten in with preferable company at hand. It is clumsily baked, by hands that are not accustomed to its recipe, but the trapper’s wife had presented it to them wrapped in her best kerchiefs and tear-rimmed eyes. The words she’d given along with the bread had been delivered tumbling and stuttering, but they were kind all the same, and the ordeal had been lovely regardless. 

The beast-slaying beforehand had been a less heartwarming affair, and there is a stain of blood on Elion’s tunic that he knows will not wash off in a hurry. At the very least, he is better off than the others – Frerin’d charged at the first sign of flashing eyes and glinting fangs, and the blonde locks of his beard are stiff and caked with gore. He’d accepted his portion of the waybread with a bright smile and now devours it with no less pep, personal hygiene be damned. There are crumbs now in his beard among the rest of its filth, and it flecks off bits as he chatters.

Thorin glares at his little brother. “Close your mouth, boy, else you’d spit up everything you have to chew.”

“It’s the same regardless,” Elion chimes in. “You dwarves have no sense of proper chewing. It’s only another form of horrible etiquette with his mouth closed.”

The eldest dwarf gives Elion a sidelong glance, sharp but not cruel. “I’m beginning to suspect it’s only a matter of time before you start squealing about etiquette and manners in the middle of a fight.”

“You suspect that,” chirps the red-haired elf with a smile. “And I’ll happily sit here, content, clean and pretty, since apparently I am the only one who cares a whit about that.”

Thorin shakes his head. “There’s no worrying about being clean if you’re a corpse.”

Elion does not lose his smile, though it curls a little wilier. He shrugs. “If you’re truly picturing me as a corpse in your mind, then you must be crueller than I thought.”

“You would make a clean-ish and pretty corpse,” Frerin supplies, a guileless sheen on his face, and if he realises the morbidity of the sentence he’s just uttered it certainly does not show. Instead it is Thorin who ducks to hide the pink peaking on his cheeks. “Perhaps that’s what Thorin is picturing. Would that still be as cruel?”

“I…” Elion fails to catch up with his tongue, gripping his words by the seat of their pants and promptly losing them to the wind. He would point out that it wouldn’t be any less cruel, even a little disturbing, if not for the way he feels a familiar burn snaking up his neck and how _amusing_ Thorin is being. The black-haired prince is scrubbing at something on his face, perhaps an itch, but it does not stifle the red tinge of his skin. Elion wouldn’t dare assume. “Well, I’d have to consider how pretty he’s picturing me. It’d still be rather grim, of course, but I could be fla-”

“Frerin is tired,” Thorin interrupts, short and curt. “Aren’t you? That’s why you’re running your mouth like a scamp.” He swallows the remainder of his lembas with surprising (and disgusting) efficiency, then pats (or, more aptly, smacks) his younger brother’s shoulder with what seems to be a smile but comes across more of a sneer. “Take a nap, why don’t you? Maybe it’ll kick your brain into gear finally.”

“Impossible!” Elion offers. “It can’t kick if there is nothing to kick.”

The golden-bearded dwarf snorts with playful derision. “As if I haven’t heard that one before. How do I know you two won’t butcher me right here once I drift off?”

“Dealing with the mess you’d make if we _did_ butcher you is far too much work that I’m willing to deal with.” Thorin climbs up to his feet in a blink, rustling up the leaves with momentum and crinkling them underfoot. The shadow of a broad tree is cast over them, but Elion does not miss the effervescent gleam in the dwarf prince’s eyes, clear and fierce. 

Thorin swabs at his trousers to trickle off the bits of dirt and little blades of grass. “A day spent only talking with you lot would be a day wasted. I’m off for a walk.”

The day is young, yet. The sun is at its crest. They’ve all the time in the world, it feels.

“I don’t suppose my presence would intrude?”

Thorin fixes him with a strange look. “Did I not just say my day would be wasted?”

“I would figure you’d know me well enough to know I care not,” Elion returns cheekily, and extends an arm upward for the dwarf to take. Beside him, Frerin is licking crumbs from his fingers and looks halfway into an actual nap, paying no care to his brother and friend’s exchange. He barely reacts when Thorin kicks his legs and steps over them to glare at Elion’s hand.

He takes it. His fingers are warm as anything.

They bring weapons with them, just in case. They’ve had a collection of excursions in this wood, jaunting about the trees and trundling past the berry-ripe shrubbery – it is a more peaceful part of it they’ve settled down in, so there is no true reason for their precaution, but Elion knows well that the weight of his axe bears a secure comfort for Thorin. Elion could do without his bow, but his uncle’d be damned if he would be caught outperformed by _Thorin_. Bloody _Thorin_ , of all people. Of all _dwarves_.

The aforementioned dwarf is, as a matter of fact, rather intent on keeping his word regarding a stroll in the peace and calm of the wood. Evening is encroaching, so the glow spilt upon them is a shimmering shade of sunlight, the kind that gives magic to everything it touches and leaves it smelling of woodsmoke and berries in kind. There is – blessedly – no sound, beside the dried leaves and grass crunching underfoot, the buzz of nighttime birds overhead. Thorin walks with a purpose in every step, like he isn’t just having a pleasant walk amongst trees – Elion keeps up with languid, long strides for every three footfalls Thorin makes. This irks him, Elion can tell, but he voices naught. They continue their reverie in quiet.

It is later, when light zephyrs begin to cruise past them and rustle the fabric of their clothes, the green-fire leaves of plant life, that the spell is broken. This is by a murmur from Thorin, and Elion is absentminded enough to give a thoughtful _’hm?’_ in response. He expects nothing of it, until Thorin halts his stride, and he does as well, in reflex.

His dark-haired friend stands basking in the warm light. _The kind that gives magic to everything it touches._

The air smells of woodsmoke and steel.

Thorin repeats what he’d just said, still a bit too quiet, so Elion steps closer. A brief, sticky moment follows, when Thorin sputters at the intrusion of his space – the elf, smiling a little, chooses not to take the dwarf’s sudden reddish colouring as a sign to step back, so there he remains.

Years have passed since their first meeting, yet Elion would daresay naught at all had changed between them – perhaps Thorin’s beard has clustered a little thicker, Elion’s hair grown a little longer, and both became the tiniest bit wiser. But his mind’s eye can scarcely differentiate the Thorin then from the one now, still with flinty blue eyes tempered with a hungry fire, still a voice weighed by ambition, possibly a small amount sadder. He is…

“I don’t understand why you’re still here.”

Elion blinks. “What?”

Thorin does not shift his feet, does not fidget. He meets Elion’s eyes head-on – the action is a familiar one, and it still leaves Elion feeling light, but the look in Thorin’s eyes grounds him.

“Why you’re still here,” Thorin gestures about vaguely, “out in the woods. With me and Frerin. Fopping about. I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“How do you mean?” Elion asks, a sun-tinged red brow raised. “Is this not what we always talk about, Thorin? To be rid of our stuffy surroundings, rid of the weight that awaits us back at home and enjoy this realm as we see fit. In adventure, with my bow and sword and Frerin’s and your axes and hammers. _Blood and sun on our skin_ , did you forget?” he pauses, but once he sees Thorin preparing to answer, suddenly his mind swims with countless thoughts, “is the matter that our adventure is less… grand than we usually dream of? Because if so, I’m not at all troubled, and in fact I–”

“– that is not what I mean,” Thorin grinds out, and while Elion does stop talking, the thoughts continue to nag. What is this? What is happening? Did he do something– something to have offended?

“Your uncle – King Thranduil. He does not like the concept of…” a beat passes, and Thorin’s idea coalesces into a peculiar gesture: he sways his index in the space between him and Elion, and the implications this prompts is maddening. Elion tries and fails to pay no mind. “This. He is displeased.”

Elion snorts; he cannot help himself. “Of course he mislikes it. But if he lets it be, then what does it matter? Our relationship”– he refrains from wincing at the term “– is a diplomatic tool, in any case. It is rather advantageous.”

“Ah.” Thorin’s façade nears faltering, and absently, he kicks the dirt. “And you. You consider this arrangement–” what is the _matter_ with them and _suggestive terms_? “– to be purely a diplomatic tool?”

“Look here,” Elion indicates at the dried blood spatter on his tunic, caking and flaking chipped bits already. “This is not the first time. That much should be indication enough of what I think about us. I don’t let just any dwarves drag me out of my very comfortable house to get me all filthy and dirty.”

Thorin is quiet for a spell, but the steel in his eyes is beginning to flicker. “Not just any dwarves,” he echoes. For a moment, Elion can swear he saw his friend’s lips curl into the barest of smiles, as fleeting as a man’s life. Thorin shifts a little, and his hand goes to the pocket on his trousers. “Then…”

“Then…?” Elion prompts. Thorin does not reply, not immediately – his palm ghosts above the leather of his trousers, shy of touching it. Elion watches the movement, intrigued, and faintly registers the outline of an object straining against the pocket. He chokes down the _’are you glad to see me’_ joke before it can spill out unchecked.

“You’ve something,” he points out instead, and inclines his head at it. “To show me?”

Thorin shakes his head. “To… ah.” He fishes the thing out, keeps it clasped in his fist, and uncurls his fingers before Elion. On his palm, laid still and tranquil, is a miniature wooden sculpture of an elk. The carving is rough on some edges, the whittling piecemeal in skill, but it is whole, and it is intelligible enough that he can suss out that it is indeed an elk. Thorin’s fingers are stiff, as if wanting to close his hand and secrete away the figure, but Elion snatches the thing from his hand before the dwarf is able to.

Paying no mind to his friend’s incredulous sputtering, Elion runs a finger through the chipped corners, and rough-hewn surface. He would guess that Thorin’d procured it from the toy market in Dale, but the whittling is… humbling, almost. It is pleasant, personable. Personal. A thought springs to mind.

“Did you make this?”

The dwarf prince’s response is immediate and comes haltingly. “No,” he says. “I acquired it from Dale. It went for a measly price, so I thought no harm would come of it.”

Elion holds the figure up in the light and makes a show of inspecting it. “So I am worth that little to you?”

It is an unbearably warm thing, to watch Thorin flush and a flurry of confused apologies-and-nots emitting from him at a clip. Elion cannot withstand his laughter long enough; the charade is up, and he does not mind the glower that Thorin grants him as his peals of laughter recede. The weight of his gaze is pleasing in its presence. Its reality.

“I’m only kidding. This is a pretty little thing you _got from the toy market_.” A hush comes all at once, when Elion looks at Thorin. His friend, who has grown up at his side. His friend, with his black hair both wiry and soft to the touch, eyes that can express wrath and anguish and love with oppressive intensity. Cheeks that are smooth and chiseled. Lips that are red and wet.

Elion quashes the yapping notions rising in his mind, and instead places a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. He feels the muscle there tense, and after only a moment’s hesitation, Elion gives it a firm squeeze. Thorin forthwith relaxes.

“Thank you,” Elion says.

A curt nod is the response he expects from Thorin. A _‘you’re welcome’_ comes off a bit more outlandish, but within the realm of possibility. Elion receives none of these.

Thorin’s arm comes up, and gradually, he sets his own hand on Elion’s. Another second passes before he closes his fingers over it, and bears weight on it gently.

The cicadas start their chanting. Afar, Frerin is still snoring. A nearby stream rushes audibly. Thorin’s fingers are warm, his hand heavy, his eyes a smidgen bit more tender than Elion is accustomed to. They stand like this, interlocked, for what feels like an age that cannot be more short-lived.

And yet for that age, ephemeral as it is, it feels more freeing than an adventure of any scale.

Elion runs his thumb over the elk’s figure again, so misshapen and beautiful and _his_ , only _his_. He squeezes Thorin’s shoulder once more, and smiles. It is the easiest thing.


End file.
